([email protected]),
Child begging is one of the main problems in Pakistan. What is the government doing to stop this? What is the Police doing? Why are they not able to go to schools and either healthy life? According to official statistics, roughly 6000 children disappear each year in Pakistan some human rights groups said that the actual number is much higher than that. Many of these children kidnapped and forced to work as beggars for organized Mafia-like criminal groups. According to UNICEF Human Rights watch these children are not allowed to keep their lives and go to schools and often starred son that they looked gone and eliciting more sympathy and donation from tourists. Since child beggars get more money than the healthy ones. Criminal groups often increase their profit by cutting out the eyes of the children or scaring their face by acid burns.
When you stand at a traffic signal or even at religious places, railway station or any other crowded place. You see a lot of familiar faces called beggars. Begging in Pakistan is not something new to our society. Elderly disable, kids and women armed with babies are frequently seen begging around. Which is now become a profession for the people. There are 25 million beggars in Pakistan. Increase in the rate of beggars has suppressed Pakistan’s GDP growth.
When economist talked about any activity related to money they always talked about the opportunity cost of an action. The opportunity cost of an action is what you have to give up doing in order to do that action, for example, if you spend 10 minutes writing this topic you cannot use these 10 minutes to do another activity like watching a movie or reading a book.so similarly you give a rupee to a beggar. The cost of opportunity is the charity and the education of poor kids that could have been done by using that rupee, so you should not give that rupee, you should give it effectively. People generally donate money to beggars because of our feeling of guilt on seen the poor or a desire to help a disabled person. But with that desire, they fail to realize that they by giving money to the beggars are doing exactly opposite of what they intend to do. A report indicates of total turnover of beggars in Pakistan is about 18o crore rupees, 30 to 40 % of which is spent on habits like smoking and drinking alcohol etc. one rupee each a day to a child beggars just get his parents of a group of which he works is a strong incentive to keep him in the begging business.
Rather than send him into school or at least make him learn some sort of trade. Also, a person who could have earn 50 rupees per day by labor might give up his work so he can earn 100 rupees a day by begging. Some small children and babies are rented out to adult beggar women in order to play with people’s emotions and earn more money. The continuous increase in begging may create various other crimes like the kidnapping of children, injuring and deforming people and increasing the record of begging there is also a need of public awareness as well as a platform for public opinion on this issue. Begging should be an offence, anyone who is on dire needs right if found begging, we should basically help them. Government and police should take them to the places where they get food medication and whatever they need butt begging should be banned. Because if there is no legislation we cannot forcefully stop begging, then people will keep begging because it’s very easy. Begging specially for children in violation of the rights of the children. It’s a burning issue everywhere specially in big cities like Lahore Islamabad etc.
They say they are drugged and we also know that a lot of children force into begging their bosses very often these are a mafia operation, there are agents involved, brokers involved. They move around the pack up children from villages and wherever they find children vulnerable and there lure them with a lot of promises and then they literally become their slaves. They have no escape from this they are tortured and deformed because by showing injuries they can evoke more sympathy and donation as well from the public. First of all they become a victim of begging and then they becomes the victim of police action and ultimately he or she confined in the beggars home. Where freedom is curtailed and violation of human rights take place in the institutions and beggars home as well that’s another side of the problem that most of the beggars home are not managed well. There are corruption involved, there is no trained staff to handle those people and take Care of the children as well. It’s like another institution to make money for the government officials who are encourage to that so people do not like to remain in the beggar’s home. Because it is that badly managed in terms of treatment or in terms of food. Thing are very bad there. More than 1700 beggars home have reportedly fled her government-run beggar’s relief center in big cities of Pakistan it’s like jail, it’s not kept well, sanitation and health hazard , it’s too bad. I didn’t have the chance to taste the food that is given to them. The very atmosphere is not friendly for the people there as a human being our approached has to charge. If you treat them as animals so it’s not going to help. so you have to be proactive while dealing with them as social problems personality problem, there should be counselling , proper rehabilitation, educational facilities and perhaps the emphases should be on this aspects rather than treating them as criminals.[email protected]